The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror

Christmas crept into Pine Cove like a creeping Christmas thing: dragging garland, ribbon, and sleigh bells, oozing eggnog, reeking of pine, and threatening festive doom like a cold sore under the mistletoe.

No one knows why, but second only to eating the brains of the living, the dead love affordable prefab furniture.

Christmas Amnesty. You can fall out of contact with a friend, fail to return calls, ignore e-mails, avoid eye contact at the Thrifty-Mart, forget birthdays, anniversaries, and reunions, and if you show up at their house during the holidays (with a gift) they are socially bound to forgive you—act like nothing happened. Decorum dictates that the friendship move forward from that point, without guilt or recrimination. If you started a chess game ten years ago in October, you need only remember whose move it is—or why you sold the chessboard and bought an Xbox in the interim. (Look, Christmas Amnesty is a wonderful thing, but it’s not a dimensional shift. The laws of time and space continue to apply, even if you have been avoiding your friends. But don’t try using the expansion of the universe an as excuse—like you kept meaning to stop by, but their house kept getting farther away. That crap won’t wash. Just say, “Sorry I haven’t called. Merry Christmas” Then show the present. Christmas Amnesty protocol dictates that your friend say, “That’s okay,” and let you in without further comment. This is the way it has always been done.)

Life is messy. Would that every puzzle piece fell into place, every word was kind, every accident happy, but such is not the case. Life is messy

He has the attention span of a hummingbird.

Well they're pissed off and they're hungry. I was kind of busy trying not to get my brains eaten. They seemed pretty adamant about the brain-eating thing. Then they're going to IKEA, I guess

If you think anyone is sane you just don’t know enough about them. The key — and this is very relevant in our case — is to find someone whose insanity dovetails with your own.

We know there's going to be nothing but pain, but we go back again and again.

Winter denial: therein lay the key to California Schadenfreude--the secret joy that the rest of the country feels at the misfortune of California. The country said: "Look at them, with their fitness and their tans, their beaches and their movie stars, their Silicon Valley and silicone breasts, their orange bridge and their palm trees. God, I hate those smug, sunshiny bastards!" Because if you're up to your navel in a snowdrift in Ohio, nothing warms your heart like the sight of California on fire. If you're shoveling silt out of your basement in the Fargo flood zone, nothing brightens your day like watching a Malibu mansion tumbling down a cliff into the sea. And if a tornado just peppered the land around your Oklahoma town with random trailer trash and redneck nuggets, then you can find a quantum of solace in the fact that the earth actually opened up in the San Fernando Valley and swallowed a whole caravan of commuting SUVs.

Hope is merely another face of desire. And desire is a motherfucker.

You were supposed to empathize with your friend's problem, but they were, after all, your friend's problems...

The bat was looking at Theo and Theo was having trouble following his own thoughts.The bat was wearing tiny sunglasses.Ray Bans,Theo could see by the trademark in the corner of one lens."I'm sorry, Mr.,uh- Case, could you take the bat off your head.It's very distracting." Him." Pardon?" It's a him.Roberto.He no like the light.

In another Christmas story, Dale Pearson, evil developer, self-absorbed woman hater, and seemingly unredeemable curmudgeon, might be visited in the night by a series of ghosts who, by showing him bleak visions of Christmas future, past, and present, would bring about in him a change to generosity, kindness, and a general warmth toward his fellow man. But this is not that kind of Christmas story, so here, in not too many pages, someone is going to dispatch the miserable son of a bitch with a shovel. That's the spirit of Christmas yet to come in these parts. Ho, ho, ho.

Theophilus Crowe's mobile phone played eight bars of "Tangled Up in Blue" in an irritating electronic voice that sounded like a choir of suffering houseflies, or Jiminy Cricket huffing helium, or, well, you know, Bob Dylan.

Author's Warning If you're buying this book as a gift for your grandma or a kid, you should be aware that it contains cusswords as well as tasteful depictions of cannibalism and people in their forties having sex. Don't blame me. I told you.

Just because he was pretty didn't mean he couldn't be improved by a smack upside the head with a piece of earnest hickory

Hope is merely another face of desire.

He had risked his freedom and his pride to buy her this, to acknowledge that part of her that everyone else seemed to want to get rid of.

Yeah, and don't think it's easy finding Ray-Bans in a fruit-bat medium.

Your puny worm god weapons are useless against my superior Christmas Kung Fu.

That was supposed to be the whole purpose of the Internet, you know. To share scientific information." "Not a Viagra- and porn-delivery system?

Raziel! Go forth into the land and lay waste unto two good-size Wal-Marts, slay until blood doth flow from all bargains and all the buildings are but rubble — and pick up a few Snickers bars for yourself.

IKEA,” chanted the dead. “First we feast, then IKEA. First we feast, then IKEA.

Molly stood over the stove, naked, except for a wide sash from which was slung the scabbard for her broadsword at the center of her back, giving the impression that she had won honors in the Miss Nude Random Violence Pageant. Her

Blessed are the minimarshmallows,” the angel said, swooning a little.

The constable lit the bong and lost himself in the scuba bubbles of sweet comforting smoke.

Senti, abbiamo delle specie di regole qui". Indicò il cartello sul bancone. NIENTE CAMICIA O NIENTE SCARPE, NIENTE SERVIZIO. Molly abbassò lo sguardo su di sé. «Oh dio, me le sono scordate». «É tutto a posto». «Ho lasciato le scarpe in macchina. Faccio un salto e me le metto». «Sarebbe stupendo,Molly.Grazie». «Nessun problema». «So che sul cartello non c'è scritto, ma già che ci sei, potresti metterti anche un paio di pantaloni? Sarebbe sottinteso». «Certo» disse Molly con disinvoltura davanti al bancone. Uscì dal negozio e sentì che l'aria si era proprio rinfrescata. E già, i suoi jeans e le mutandine erano sul sedile del passeggero, accanto alle scarpe da tennis.

Life is messy. Would that every puzzle piece fell into place, every word was kind, every accident happy, but such is not the case. Life is messy. People, generally, suck. This